


meanwhile, in another life

by any_other_name



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: 2x08, F/F, Fix-It, Wish Fulfillment, but at least it's more in character than what went down in the finale, communication in relationships is important, even for assassins, even if it's hysterical communication, this might be slightly ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 06:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19000213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/any_other_name/pseuds/any_other_name
Summary: This is what happened at the end of the finale in the parallel universe that is my imagination. There have been a lot of these lately, but hey-ho. The more the merrier, right?





	meanwhile, in another life

Villanelle strode through the tunnel, buoyed up by the satisfaction of finally,  _finally_ , pushing Eve far enough that she had to let go of the ridiculous mask of banality that she'd insisted on hanging onto for so long. She was bound to feel a little out of sorts for a bit; even Villanelle had been a little overwhelmed her first time. But when she came back to herself, woke up from the stupor that she seemed to be floating through, she would finally be at peace with herself. Free from the person she'd had to pretend to be all her life just to fit into everyone else's idea of normal. And Villanelle would be right there to hold her hand while she got reacquainted with herself.

"There's an exit somewhere around here, I think," she said.

"Here," she heard Eve say from behind her, "I can see light."

She turned around and there she was: her light at the end of the tunnel. She couldn't help but chuckle. After all this time, everything was falling into place. The two of them together, on their own team and no-one else's. As it should be.

Eve threw herself against wooden blockade with a crash and pressed her face to one of the gaps, looking for the source of the daylight spilling through it. She must have been satisfied with whatever she saw, because she reared back with a victorious set to her shoulders.  "Yes," she said quietly, as if agreeing with Villanelle's internal monologue. She pounded her fists against it, and dust rained to the floor. Villanelle glanced over her shoulder, wondering if there were any locals close enough to hear the resulting racket. Probably not. It was probably fine. She could handle it if it wasn't. She was about to go and unlatch the smaller section near the tunnel wall, which had clearly been installed to provide access to construction workers, but when she turned back around Eve had already picked up a round fence post off the floor and was holding it like a battering ram. She swung it back and drove it into the unsuspecting blockade with vicious, uncompromising force. Repeatedly. 

Villanelle wasn't sure whether to be impressed or concerned. She didn't seem to be slowing down at all. It wasn't strictly necessary, of course, but far be it from Villanelle to try and stop her. It seemed as suitable a method to exorcise her aggression as any. If she wasn't broadcasting so much anger, Villanelle might have thought she was enjoying herself. Which would not be entirely unprecedented, she supposed, remembering the state she had found her apartment in when Eve had come to visit. Still - if she had been floating in shock earlier, now she seemed to still be stuck in fight-or flight. Villanelle wondered which one was more prevalent. Was she attacking the fence as a stand-in for an opponent? Or was she just desperate to get out? Maybe it was both.

"Come on, you piece of shit," Eve growled, and the blockade finally gave way completely. Villanelle's eyebrows climbed even further up her forehead. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" 

"Yeah." Eve dropped the wooden battering ram as if she'd forgotten about it and leaned through the opening, catching her breath. Villanelle shook her head in wonder and took a moment to admire the carnage as she followed her through. 

"Nice job," she said appreciatively. Eve was standing in the shadows at the bottom of a flight of ancient-looking stone steps, staring up into the bright sunshine. Villanelle was not a particularly sentimental or superstitious person, but she couldn't help but feel that this was an oddly fitting way to step into the first chapter of their new era. She waited for Eve to take the lead, but the other woman seemed to have dropped back into her trance as quickly as she had snapped out of it. 

"You need a hand?" Villanelle glanced at Eve's face as she walked past, but let her move at her own pace. No-one was chasing them now; she could afford to. 

As she reached the top of the steps, some sort of ruined bath complex opened up in front of her. The sky was reflected in a circle of calm water, disrupted only by a small structure on an artificial island. Sandstone columns stood along the edge like tree trunks, holding up what presumably used to be the ceiling, far above them. Villanelle drew in an awed breath and craned her neck around to take it all in. What struck her most, though, was the silence. There was no road noise, no dogs barking or people talking or doors slamming. It was a stark contrast to the hubbub of the city centre they'd fled a few minutes ago. Her feet carried her closer to the water, past a couple of the columns. She ran her hands along one. No-one would look for them here. It was perfect, just like she'd promised Eve. She was almost laughing, and not for show, but out of... joy. This was what joy felt like.

"It's beautiful," said Eve. When Villanelle spun towards her, she was standing at the top of the steps.

 _You were glorious,_  she wanted to say,  _just like I always knew you would be._

"What do you want for dinner?" she said instead.

Eve looked at her blankly. "Dinner?"

Villanelle hummed as if this was a conversation they'd had dozens of times.

"Tonight I could make dinner."

"Oh." Eve was looking out over the water. "Spaghetti?" She turned towards her as if seeking her approval. Villanelle laughed again.

"Good idea," she said. When in Rome, and all that.

"I was thinking," she said, walking backwards so that she could keep looking at Eve, "we should go to Alaska. Have you seen pictures? It's  _so_  amazing." It was not a new daydream. It was what she'd imagined when she was in prison and she'd needed an escape. It was where she went when she couldn't sleep. It had only ever been a pipe dream, of course. She'd assumed that she'd never even tell Eve about it. But anything was possible now.

"We could uh... get a cabin," she continued. She felt a bit self-conscious, but it felt good to let her guard down for once. "No-one would bother us there. We could be normal," she said. She'd have what she'd always wanted - someone to watch movies with. She had a thought. "And I - I have money. So you wouldn't need to worry about that," she said in a rush.

Eve had been wandering after her like a slightly dazed duckling. "Okay," she said absently. 

Villanelle felt protectiveness settle over her when she saw how lost she looked. She walked back towards where Eve had turned to gaze out over the water again and touched her gently on the forearm. Eve blinked endearingly at her as if she'd forgotten where they were.  

 _You're very cute when you're in shock,_ she wanted to say. 

"You'll feel better soon," she said instead. She couldn't stop smiling. "I'll look after you." She shook her head at all of the possibilities. "It's going to be amazing," she said. She grinned and turned to keep walking, knowing that Eve would follow her. "Come on!" she called over her shoulder. She'd reached an archway in the stone wall, and she walked through it into the ruins of a wide atrium. "Through here," she said. Eve wandered after her. Villanelle turned her face up to the remains of the ceiling and marvelled at it, completely unguarded. If she could live anywhere in the world, she decided, she'd live right here. She'd put a self-cleaning glass roof over the whole thing and let the light fall through just like this. This would be the master bedroom, all three stories of it. She and Eve could lie in bed and watch the stars. 

A sudden noise startled her back to earth and she pulled her gun from her belt before she'd fully processed it. Senses on high alert, ready to triangulate which direction to move to place herself between Eve and the threat − 

Birds. The threat was birds. They were roosting in her imaginary skylight. She relaxed in relief, letting the gun hang down by her side. "It's just the birds," she said. "We're fine."

"You have a gun?" Eve was staring at it, more alert than Villanelle had seen her since they'd left the hotel.  _Oops._  Well, that cat wasn't going back in the bag. 

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

Villanelle turned her back to her, started walking towards the archway on the other side of the atrium. "Doesn't matter," she said dismissively.

Eve was not willing to be dismissed. She never was. "Why didn't you −"

"Hmm?" Villanelle tried to play dumb.

"Why didn't you  _shoot Raymond?_ " She was completely present now, no trace of the fugue state from a few seconds ago. There was no room for it next to all of the intense emotions crowding her face that Villanelle couldn't hope to decipher. Every muscle in her body carried tension, all of it focussed on Villanelle. She leaned towards her as if all she needed to find her answers was just to look that little bit closer. In any other situation it would have been incredibly sexy.

Villanelle looked at her as if the answer was obvious. "You had it under control."

"No, I −" Realisation dawned on her face, and morphed into something Villanelle didn't recognise. "You  _wanted_  me to do it," she said. She turned away from Villanelle, as if she'd been cut loose from her tether.

Villanelle laughed, but not like she had earlier. "I wanted you to know how it feels. How did it feel?"

Eve was nodding slowly as if she'd just confirmed something. "That's all this has ever been." She turned back towards Villanelle and looked her straight in the eyes. "Isn't it?" she said. "Just out of professional curiosity, if this is some sort of ridiculously inefficient recruitment programme, why go to all this trouble for one middle aged lady with no combat skills? Or were you just bored? Figured you'd hunt me for sport?"

Villanelle had lost track of the rules of the game. She moved closer to Eve, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Eve batted her hand away.

"Do  _not_  crowd me right now."

"What's all this has ever been?" Villanelle said.

Eve scoffed at the ceiling, and shook her head as she laughed. "Don't even," she said. She wagged her finger in Villanelle's general direction as she walked away from her. "Don't even  _pretend_  −"

"Well excuse me if I'm having trouble seeing how you got from inviting you to a cabin in Alaska to... hunting you for sport!" Villanelle struggled to find her footing. She'd let her guard down further than she had really meant to, and now she was reeling.

"I'll spell it out for you, shall I?" Eve said. Somehow the full force of the rage that she'd unleashed on the blockade in the tunnel was now present in her words, aimed straight at Villanelle.

"Please do!" She spread her hands helplessly, shoulders drawn up to her ears, her eyes going so wide that she felt like more of her eyeballs were outside her skull than inside.

"I just threw my entire life away because I didn't want to be in the same room as the people who sold you out. And they sold me out too, but I wasn't even  _thinking_  about that, that's how far gone I was. And then I turn around and you've done exactly the same thing to me."

"Eve, I would never −"

"Eve Polastri is dead. She died in that hotel, because −"

Villanelle rolled her eyes. "There's no need to be so dramati−"

"− because she was  _stupid_  enough to care about you, and stupid enough to think you could care about her back. And you saw that and you used it and you played me like a fiddle. And do you know the best bit?" Eve threw her head back and laughed, and it had a hysterical edge to it. "The best bit is that everyone -  _everyone_  - warned me. They could all see what was happening a mile away. Even your buddy Konstantine! Even Anna, for fuck's sake. But no. I thought I was special." This last was said quietly.

 _You are special,_  Villanelle wanted to say.  _I do care about you._

"You are special," said Villanelle. "I do care about you."

Eve rolled her eyes. Villanelle could feel this slipping out of her control. 

"Eve, why are you being like thi−"

Suddenly Eve was right up in her personal space, staring up at her as if Villanelle was the one intruding.

"Eve is dead," she said. "You could have saved her, but you didn't. Because you wanted someone  _just like you_. Well congratulations!" She threw her hands up in such an explosive gesture that Villanelle actually leaned back half an inch. Eve showed her teeth in a savage grin. "You got me!" she announced.

 _Dead people aren't usually this angry,_  Villanelle thought.  _And I would know._

"I'm not scared of anyone," Eve said, "not even you. So if this plan of yours involves pimping me out to kill the lowlife of the week, I'd really rather you just shoot me now."

She was looking at Villanelle expectantly. Villanelle stared back in horror. Eve took hold of her hand and the gun in it and pulled it up to press against her own temple, locked into eye contact the whole time. "Well?" she said. Villanelle was frozen. She was glad that a steady trigger finger was hardwired into her brain, because the rest of her body didn't feel entirely under her control. "Come on!" Eve screamed, point blank, six inches from Villanelle's face.

Villanelle snapped. "I can't!" she yelled back, pressing the muzzle harshly into Eve's temple. "It would have made my life a lot easier if I could. But the last thing I want is to see you dead." With abrupt movements, she pointed the small gun at the ground, dropped the magazine out, and threw the rest of it clear across the room. It clattered against the wall and fell to the ground.

Eve smiled. "Too late," she said. She didn't look angry anymore. The disappointment painted across her face was far too familiar, and Villanelle was reminded viscerally of Anna. That look didn't belong on Eve's beautiful face. Villanelle would do just about anything to get rid of it.

"I love you," she blurted out. Eve sighed.

"I don't know what that means anymore."

"I do. It means you're mine." 

"And there it is." Eve was suddenly dangerous again. She took a predatory step forward, forcing Villanelle to step back. She felt off-balance. 

"I thought you wanted space," she muttered.

"Did you think I would let you put me in a box and tie me up with a ribbon? Or maybe tug on my heartstrings and watch me dance, like a good little puppet? Or, if I ever wanted to walk away, shoot me in the back because if you couldn't have me then no-one could?" She held Villanelle still and quiet with nothing but her eyes. "Didn't your mother ever tell you that people aren't possessions?"

Villanelle's mother had not, in fact, told her that people were not possessions, nor much of anything else for that matter, but that was hardly relevant.

"I don't want to put you in a box. I want to help you climb out of one."

Eve started to laugh. And she kept laughing, as if she didn't know how to stop, until she was stumbling away from Villanelle and sucking in lungfuls of air and Villanelle couldn't tell if she was laughing or sobbing. It seemed like she was doing both at the same time. She caught her heel on the uneven floor and crumpled to the ground in a hysterical heap. Villanelle crouched down cautiously.

"Eve?"

Eve stopped laughing like a switch had been flipped, and sat straight up, silent, her face a mess. 

"Eve is dead," she said, eerily calm. "I killed her with her an ax while you watched."

Villanelle remembered the day when she knew she wasn't Oksana anymore. How choosing a new name had let her reclaim herself. She spoke carefully, as if to a frightened animal. "Okay. So who am I speaking to?"

"I don't know yet," said the woman who used to be Eve. "But I'm not who you want me to be." She looked down at her hands, still covered in blood. She clenched them into fists to stop them shaking. "I'm not who you want me to be," she repeated, a little more firmly.

She was talking as if Villanelle was trying to make her into someone who she wasn't. But all she'd ever done was see who she already was and try to help her embrace it. She sighed and settled cross-legged on the ground in her pristine red trousers. She started to reach out for the woman in front of her, but dug her fingernails into the dirt on the floor instead. 

"It's okay if it doesn't make sense right now. But you killed a very bad man because it was the only way to save a life. You're the good guy."

Not-Eve stared at her incredulously. "Since when do you care about good and bad?"

" _I_  don't, obviously. But you clearly do."

Not-Eve looked back down at her hands. "I'm starting to think that there are no good guys."

Villanelle privately agreed with that sentiment, but she decided not to say that out loud. "I'm sorry."

Not-Eve looked up. It was clearly not what she'd expected to hear. "What?" she said.

"I don't know what love is either. No-one's really ever given me a demonstration. But I'd like to figure it out. With you. If you'll let me."

Not-Eve just stared at her.

"If I believed you now, that would make me an even bigger idiot."

"But you want to?"

Not-Eve looked back at her hands and smiled with dark humour. There was no way out of this anymore. "We've already established I'm not the sharpest knife in the block."

"Stop calling yourself names. Only I get to do that." She said it like a joke, but the truth was that she felt unsettled by the way Not-Eve was talking about herself. She managed to restrain herself from pulling her into her arms, because she seemed so fragile that she might fall apart if she tried that. But she leaned down far enough to catch her eyes.

"You think you're alone in this? Aaron offered me everything.  _Everything_. A couple years ago I would have thought I wanted it. But next to you? There's no competition." She shook her head at herself. "I should have been out of the city long before Raymond caught up with me, but I couldn't leave you." She grit her teeth in frustration. "God,  _please_ can I hug you? I'm going crazy over here."

Not-Eve hesitated, then nodded. Villanelle shuffled over and delicately wrapped her arms around her. Not-Eve stiffened at first, but then melted into her and pushed her face into her neck. 

Villanelle thought about Anna, how she was always trying to outrun the older woman's perennial disappointment. She thought about Nadia, how she'd promised her sweetly to earn back her trust and then run her over with a truck. Twice. "There were times when I thought I was in love before I met you. But even if it was intoxicating in the moment, I could always switch it off if I needed to. I can't switch you off. I've tried. You are very inconvenient. I  _cried_  about you, for God's sake." 

Not-Eve snorted. Villanelle held her tighter. "You made us safe from Raymond. Let me make us safe from everyone else. And then when the danger's over, if you still want to walk away, I promise I won't shoot you in the back."

Not-Eve pulled back to look at her. Villanelle held up three fingers. "Scout's Honour," she said. 

"Why not?" said Not-Eve.

 _Because you want her to be happy,_  a traitorous little voice whispered to Villanelle. She ignored it. "The same reason I've never pushed you against a wall and kissed you. Because otherwise I wouldn't know whether you actually wanted it, and where's the fun in that?"

Not-Eve's eyes flickered down to her lips. "Why should I believe you?"

"You probably shouldn't," said Villanelle reasonably. "But at this point the better question is whether you'd rather bet your life on me or The Twelve."

Not-Eve searched her face, although Villanelle wasn't sure what she was looking for.

"Okay," she said eventually.

Villanelle didn't bother to keep the relief off her face. 

"Okay," she said.

 

**THE BEGINNING**

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly wrote this for myself, but I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, I'd love it if you left a comment, even if it's a really short one :)


End file.
